Tag: sci fi

Revisiting Black Mirror in Composition + Special Issue of Supernatural Studies

A few folks emailed me in the past couple of weeks asking for more information around my Black Mirror-themed composition course, so I thought I’d post a few revisions and tweaks I’m working on as I prepare for the next iteration of this class. I focused on Get Out in the fall, but will come back to Black Mirror in both Composition I and our Liberal Arts capstone in the spring. I’ll post in the next week or so on the capstone class.

In case you are looking for additional resources on Black Mirror — both scholarly articles and/or reflections on teaching — I’d suggest you also check out the special issue of Supernatural Studies (4.2)… Read more

CFP: Special Issue of Supernatural Studies on Black Mirror

I’m guest-editing a special issue of the peer-reviewed journal Supernatural Studies; the fall/winter issue will be devoted to the series Black Mirror. 

The CFP is below, and more information about the journal is here (a new site for the journal is in the works, and the Black Mirror issue will be open access). Thanks so much to Leah Richards, John Ziegler, and the editorial board for their feedback and this opportunity.

Call For Papers: Fall/Winter 2017 Special Issue of Supernatural Studies

Black Mirror: Supernatural as Near-Future Technology

Guest editor Bethany Holmstrom, Assistant Professor of English, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY

The anthology series Black Mirror offers up various worlds, visions, and fantasies for the future of technology.… Read more

AI, Transhumanism, & Posthumanism: Some Introductory Readings

I‘m very excited to be co-facilitating – with colleague Priscilla Stadler, the Center for Teaching & Learning Instructional Design Manager – a semester-long faculty seminar this fall. This is an outgrowth of the NEH Technology, Self, and Society seminar that I was part of for the past two years. Our seminar, Future Humans, will be more pedagogy-focused, but will draw on the themes of transhumanism, posthumanism, and AI that came up in the Technology, Self, & Society sessions. … Read more

The Future Is Fucked

The house was packed a week ago today, when physicist Michio Kaku visited LaGuardia. He came at the invitation of the NEH-funded faculty seminar at LaGuardia – Technology, Self, and Society. 1 Students were engaged by  his presentation, and there were long lines up the aisles of the auditorium to ask him questions (equally long were the lines for selfies and book-signings afterwards). This event was clearly a conversation starter, and Dr. Kaku gave our school community a lot to think (and talk) about. It was an important visit.

However. At one point during his talk, Dr. Kaku referred to a future where “perfect capitalism” exists – where consumers can custom order any item (his example was clothing) to be tailor-fit to their digitally stored body measurements.… Read more

Notes:

  1. Friend and colleague Dr. Naomi Stubbs brought this grant to our campus. This is my second year as part of the seminar, and it has been a wonderful venue for exchanging ideas – both in terms of my own scholarship and my teaching. ↩

The End of the World As We Know It; Or, My Post-Apocalyptic Lit/Comp II Class

Yesterday, a small team of faculty in our department spent four very productive hours, fueled by coffee and mini-Creme Brulee confections from Doughnut Plant, workshopping our hybrid syllabi and assignments for the spring. We applied for and received a generous grant from LaGuardia’s Center for Teaching & Learning to work on our hybrid program this year, and a group of us are working more closely on hybrid course design and further program development.

This is my first time teaching ENG 102: Writing Through Literature – our second-level composition class – as a hybrid. I taught the course around post-apocalyptic lit last year, but I’m overhauling it now both in terms of content (while keeping the post-apocalyptic theme) and design for hybrid delivery.… Read more

Capstone Class: Digital Media Projects

For their culminating project, students in my Humanism, Science, and Technology class were asked to create some kind of creative digital media project that touched on our class themes. LIB 200 is the capstone class for Liberal Arts majors at LaGuardia, and our section focused specifically on AI in sci-fi films and TV shows. The students embraced the challenge, and I wanted to take a moment to show off their fabulous work. Working individually or in groups, they first pitched a proposal to the class – getting feedback and crowd-sourcing ideas. Next, they drafted a design plan (which included a research narrative), and then executed the project.… Read more

Humanism, Science, and Technology Class-Generated Survey

Students in my Humanism, Science, and Technology capstone class – LIB 200 – generated a survey to gather data and opinions related to topics/discussions that have come up during our meetings (or virtually in our Slack chat forum). As I wrote about a bit earlier, our section is looking at Artificial Intelligence in sci-fi films and tv shows, and considering some of the current debates around AI development. Please fill out this short survey to help us out – thanks!… Read more

AI & Sci-Fi: Fall 2015 syllabus for Humanism, Science, and Technology

Faculty are given a lot of latitude when developing our sections for the liberal arts capstone class at LaGuardia, Humanism, Science, and Technology. The original impetus for this class was that I really, really wanted an excuse to teach the Battlestar Galactica reboot; that, and the theme dovetails with the NEH faculty seminar I was part of last year and will join again this coming year, Technology, Self, and Society. It pains me to say this, but BSG did not make the final cut: there were so many other excellent sci-fi films/shows suggested by colleagues and friends that more directly engaged with the debates surrounding technology and artificial intelligence.… Read more